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Mom’s Rhubarb-Apricot Platz

This is a recipe I grew up eating: my Mennonite Mom’s platz. It is a thin coffee cake with fruit and streusel on top. Sometimes on the second day the cake layer would get a bit dried out, but I didn’t mind too much because the fruit and streusel were so yummy. For this recipe I used a combination of rhubarb and apricots, but plums are another favourite.

Even though the photos show a thick round cake, I grew up with it baked thinly in rectangular form, which was cut into squares.

What you need for the cake:

1/2 cup butter (the original recipe called for crisco or margarine)

1/2 cup sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

about 1/2 cup milk

2-3 cups chopped fruit of your choice

What you need for the streusel:

1/4 cup melted butter

1 cup sugar

3/4 cup flour

pinch salt

splash of vanilla

What you do:

1. Preheat the oven to 35oF.

2. To make the cake, cream the 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup sugar well.

3. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt.

4. Crack the egg into a measuring cup and mix it up a little with a fork. Add enough milk to the measuring cup so it reaches the 2/3 cup mark.

5. Mix in some of the liquid and alternate with the dry ingredients. Spread this mixture in the bottom of a buttered 9 x 13 inch pan.

6. Spread the fruit on top of the batter.

7. To make the streusel topping just combine all the ingredients; my mom says to do it with a whisk, but I just used a fork and then mixed it with my hands, and then sprinkled it on the cake with my hands.